UNISON members fight pay cuts at Care UK

On Thursday UNISON members employed by Care UK in Doncaster Yorkshire, commenced seven days strike action in protest at pay cuts. The 150 learning disabilities workers are facing up to 50% loss of earnings following transfer from NHS employment to the private sector care provider. Agenda for Change conditions of service including annual leave entitlement and weekend enhancements are being attacked:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/care-uk-doncaster-strike-taking-3190492
http://www.southyorkshiretimes.co.uk/news/doncaster-care-workers-begin-strike-action-1-6468718

NHS pay - hands off our increments

In the latest of a long line of attacks on NHS workers, the Con Dem health secretary Jeremy Hunt MP has pre-empted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body - which are due early next year - and announced that 1% pay restraint policy will continue for a further 3 years. To add insult to injury, multi millionaire Hunt has placed a condition on the paltry 1% rise that health unions must accept the scrapping of service related increments - which are fundamental to the Agenda for Change pay structure.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-staff-told-no-pay-2937572

NHS 2014 Pay - a test of Review Body's integrity

Almost 10 years on from the introduction of the NHS wide Agenda for Change (AfC) pay system, LRD Workplace Report has published a useful overview of pay in the NHS. It analyses the impact of pay restraint, the Health and Social Care Act, pressures for regional pay and related concessions on the national agreement, pay progression and the systematic downbanding taking place as NHS employers seek to roll back gains made under the AfC agreement. Looking ahead to the 2014 pay award the article concludes that ‘AfC is still highly prized by the unions, but members will also be expecting it, and the system of NHSPRB recommendations on which it rests, to deliver on pay too’
http://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=WR&iss=1695&id=idp21296

NHS pay under further attack

In its submission to the NHS pay review body the Department of Health is calling for flat rate seven day working and the scrapping of incremental progression as pre-conditions for the 1% pay rise sanctioned by the Con Dem Government. The employer proposals mark a further attack on the Agenda for Change national agreement despite union concessions made as recently as April 2013 on the removal of enhancements from sick pay and tighter criteria for incremental progression. The integrity of the NHS pay review body as an independent system of pay determination has been a strongly contested issue in UNISON and the next pay award will be a major test of its credibility as an alternative to collective bargaining:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/245628/evidence_to_nhsprb.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/04/jeremy-hunt-nhs-pay-rise-cancelled

UNISON Health Conference Preview

#uHealth2013 UNISON health activists are meeting in Glasgow today for the union's 2013 national health conference. Delegates gather at a pivotal time for the NHS as it struggles under the Con Dem government's onslaught of cuts and structural destruction. The scale of the government's attack is unprecedented and the NHS now stands on a precipice, which if unchecked will see the end of free universal health care in this country.

Tories hand in glove with SW NHS Employer Cartel

Steve Walker has blogged an interesting account of yesterday's two Parliamentary debates on regional pay in the NHS and the South West NHS employer cartel plotting to break away from the Agenda for Change national agreement. Steve reports on two responses from Anna Soubry MP, the Tory Under-Secretary of State for Health, in which she let slip advanced knowledge of the machinations of the South West employers - comments conveniently omitted from the Hansard record of the debates.